Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/474

422 superseded by the formal recognition, in Lord Canning's Governor-Generalship, of the right of ruling chiefs to adopt successors, on the failure of heirs natural, according to the laws or customs of their religion, their race, or their family, so long as they are loyal to the crown and faithful to their engagements. The extent to which confidence has been restored by this edict is shown by the curious fact that since its promulgation a childless ruler very rarely adopts in his own lifetime. An heir presumptive, who knows that he is to succeed and may possibly grow impatient if his inheritance is delayed, is not desired by politic princes for various obscure reasons; so that the duty of nominating a successor is often left to the widows, who know their husband's mind and have every reason for wishing him long life.

The Panjab and Pegu were conquests of war; the states of Satara, Jhansi, and Nagpur had fallen in by lapse. The kingdom of Oudh is the only great Indian state of which its ruler has been dispossessed upon the ground of intolerable misgovernment. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the vizir pledged himself by a treaty made with Lord Wellesley to establish such a system of administration as would be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects; and it was also agreed that the vizir would always advise with and act in conformity with the counsel of the Company's officers. These pledges had been so entirely and continuously neglected that the whole of Oudh had fallen into constantly increasing confusion, until it subsided into